


Evenfall

by seitsensarvi



Category: Cain Saga and Godchild
Genre: Drug Use, M/M, Oaths & Vows, Poison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 09:51:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11400126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seitsensarvi/pseuds/seitsensarvi
Summary: “Hand me the vial,” he asked. “It'll help me sleep.”





	Evenfall

**Author's Note:**

> this is like writing a love letter, except ten years later

“Hand me the vial, Riff”, he asked. “'t'll help me sleep.”

It took but one drop before Cain's head hit the pillows, no more than a flutter before the ceiling seemed higher. Him, lighter.

He recognized the effects as they came, one by one; the heightened senses, the quickened heartbeat. He might have dosed it too strongly, this time again, but Riff would find him as always, panicked and gentle, collected on the outside in ways he never was in, and he would cover his feverish body with covers he kept God knew where, and he would move the entirety of the oceans and rearrange the whole of the sky to make sure Cain rested and healed. 

Lived. 

There had been blood on his hands that day, and he coudn't remember whose it had been. He lifted them to his eyes, hazy and slow, and he noticed he'd done a poor job of washing them clean. There was still a redness at the tips of his fingers, clots under his nails.

The late afternoon sun was shying away. Cain watched the heavy curtains over the windows steal the last of the light. His heads rolled to the side, lazy. 

“You'd die for me, right”, he demanded for the hundredth time. 

“I would, my lord. I will,” a far-off voice replied. It sounded less and less like a comfort. Less and less like Riff's.

The walls trembled around Cain, or it might have been his own body. The tidal ache in his stomach had come fast, and wouldn't subside. It took him back to tiny boats on narrow seas, to drowned men breathing.

Dead men living.

Revulsed, he still let the images come, those of wires and tubes all over Riff, bleeding his scarred body dry and he wondered how anyone could even dare perpetrating such a crime, and he would forget just that easily how it had been the only reason he had been alive. How it had kept the illusion alive, the wish. 

The Earl had taken lives too. He had done wrongs, and half of them he'd done uncaring. He couldn't explain why replacing the blood coursing through that kind heart felt more terrible a sin than he had ever comitted.

He would have gladly lost his mind, would have offered his brain dissected and labelled to Delilah on a silver plate himself along with his best wishes if it would have changed a thing. He would have thrown the last of his sanity to any demon who'd listen if it would have given him the man back, but nothing could. Nothing will.

Though the memories still came back every time, they were becoming fainter and fainter, as if he would need to abandon them too eventually. He would go after them still like a starved man as long as they would appear, whenever he could no longer occupy his mind with revenge and he waited alone in too big a house and everywhere felt empty. 

After the first inevitable dread had passed, as if a tribute he needed to pay each time he wavered and pressed a needle to his skin, he would always chase the sweetness he had lost, torturing. The haunting feeling of reassurance, work-roughened hands on his back in one of those many nights he couldn't sleep, a lifetime ago, steadying his sobs with careful fingers and removing his sweat-drenched shirt like it was his most important duty. He'd thought the nightmares had been bad then.

This once again he chased after quieter times, tea never sweetened though the man knew he was the only one Cain would ever trust with it, with his life. He chased after yet another embrace, yet another oath repeated until he had been so sure he could at least hold someone close, just one. Clear eyes finding him, assured footsteps headed his way only. Flowers thrown on a bed, his own blood on the man's lips. 

He chased what had never been. 

Cain knew he would have better done to recognize it when it had mattered, that one other heightening of his senses, that different quickening of his heartbeat. He'd been accustomed to the sting so slowly, had gotten used to the venom so well he hadn't thought to feel wary of an invisible illness that had taken advantage of all the time it had been given to settle deep.

How naive he had been to go so far as to build his own cage with his two hands, with each bullet fired or taken and each word whispered, soft in his ear. He had locked himself inside a man's devotion, the blood he had shed in his name, and his arms around him. He had watched himself fall, and he had closed his eyes to murmur his thanks, and he knew as certainly as he trusted his curse that if given the chance, he would do it again. Against all odds, against all warnings.

On the days he felt less alive, he would allow himself to imagine it, his fingers closing around Riff's neck. He revelled in the fantasy and the holes it bore into his chest until all of him had crumbled away. He had imagined it many times, had refined the act so it would resemble a ritual, like every other one between them. He had decided there was not one poison good enough for him, not a single concoction dear enough to tell all he meant to tell. Poison was too impersonal for Riff, too removed for a man who'd stolen his breath and the last of his life and he would need to reclaim both, to feel his pulse slow under his palms, to swallow his last exhale.

He pictured it minutely, tasted it on his tongue like one would savor a treat or the satisfaction of a debt repayed and yet it was none of those things, could be none of those things when it was the last thought that kept him alive, the first one he blinked out of his eyes come morning.

He would follow forgotten roads and tortuous paths to the end of the world, to the edges of the sky, to the depths of the sea. He would follow the echoes in his pulse, trusting that it would always lead to him.

He would be good with Riff. He would close his eyes softly. He would trace the roses blooming on his chest with his fingers, with his lips. 

He would be good, so good to him, until he would be no more, until he would be gone, and his. 

Bloodstained hands grasped at nothing. The man dissolved under his gaze like ashes in the wind.

The seconds agonized until Cain came back eventually, thin sheets pooled around his legs and liquid ice in his veins. Night had fallen. Night always fell too fast in those moments, the hours stolen and it was the sole blessing he still knew. He shook the last remnants of ghost warmth off his skin, half successful, half unwilling. He prayed Mary slept soundly.

It had been only a drop. It had been foolish to inject himself, the Earl thought, but there was no one left who would stop him.


End file.
